This app gives your Mac a music player you’ll actually enjoy using
Liqoria is a Mac music player that works with Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube, and more. It gives you floating, menu bar, Dock, and Lock Screen players in a single app.
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Apple Music on the Mac is a chore. Liqoria is the fix, and it plays nice with Spotify and YouTube too.
Rachit Agarwal / Digital Trends
The Apple Music app on the Mac is not up to the mark. I don’t like how it looks or behaves, and Apple should take some inspiration from Spotify to make the app more modern and useful. Until that happens, we are stuck with a subpar app experience.
That’s why I never use the Apple Music app on my Mac and rely on third-party apps that let me control music. Today I am featuring one of the latest apps I discovered. It’s called Liqoria, and it’s probably the only music player app you will ever need.
What makes Liqoria different from other music apps?
Most third-party music player apps are glorified remote controls. They sit in your menu bar and press the play button on Apple Music or Spotify for you, which is of limited use.
Rachit Agarwal / Digital Trends
Liqoria takes a different route. It works as a proper music app in its own right, letting you carry out actions without falling back on the original app. For example, it lets me not only play/pause or skip songs but also search for them, making it easy to find and play the songs I want without opening the original app.
Rachit Agarwal / Digital Trends
This results in a more unified experience, where everything happens inside Liqoria instead of bouncing between apps. The app also supports Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube, and your browser, so you can control all your music from one place.
What other features does the app bring to the table?
Liqoria gives you multiple ways to control your music. There is a floating player you can place anywhere on your desktop, a menu bar player for a quick peek, and a macOS Dock player that keeps the controls in easy reach.
Rachit Agarwal / Digital Trends
Because you can pick the player that suits the moment, you are not stuck with one rigid layout. Working in full screen? Use the Dock player. Sitting back with a coffee? Let the floating player do its thing.
You also get a real-time waveform, smooth animations, and some visual customization options. The app also supports animated artwork for Apple Music, but it was buggy for me.
But that might be because I am running macOS Golden Gate beta. Apart from that minor inconvenience, Liqoria seems like a solid music player that your Mac has been missing.
Rachit is a seasoned tech journalist with over ten years of experience covering the consumer technology landscape.
Anthropic is giving away Claude Fable 5 at no extra cost for a limited time
You can try Claude Fable 5 for free - but don't wait too long
Anthropic is making it a little easier for paying subscribers to try its newest AI model without spending extra money. The company has announced a limited-time promotion that gives users on eligible paid plans access to Claude Fable 5 at no additional cost until July 19, 2026. There's a catch, though: the model isn't completely unlimited, and once you hit a usage threshold, you'll either need to start paying or switch to another Claude model.
The promotion comes as competition in the AI assistant market continues to intensify. OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and Anthropic are all racing to get users onto their latest flagship models, often using free trials or promotional access to encourage adoption. Rather than offering unlimited access, Anthropic is betting that giving subscribers enough time to experience Fable 5's capabilities will convince many to continue using it after the promotion ends.
Scammers are now cloning trusted news websites to steal your money
Breaking news: That breaking news probably isn't breaking news
Seeing a story on the website of a trusted news organisation is usually enough to lower your guard. Cybercriminals know that, and they're increasingly exploiting the credibility of major publishers to steal money from unsuspecting readers. The latest example involves fake Guardian articles featuring billionaire Jim Ratcliffe. Still, the scam is part of a much larger campaign that's also impersonating the BBC and other well-known media outlets.
According to The Guardian, fraudsters are creating convincing clones of legitimate news websites and filling them with fabricated stories designed to lure readers into bogus cryptocurrency and investment schemes. Instead of trying to hack victims directly, the scammers first convince them they're reading real journalism.
This floating AI robot looks like it escaped a Studio Ghibli film, and that’s exactly the point
Finally, a flying robot that probably won't chase your cat
Most home robots today have one thing in common: they're loud, rigid, and unmistakably robotic. Whether it's a vacuum cleaner bumping into furniture or a drone buzzing overhead, they're built to perform tasks - not necessarily to make people feel comfortable. Researchers in Japan think there's a better way, and it starts with taking inspiration from animated creatures rather than industrial machines.
A research team led by Mingyang Xu at Keio University, in collaboration with institutions including the MIT Media Lab, has unveiled a prototype floating companion robot that glides silently through the air instead of rolling across the floor. Rather than looking like another gadget, the robot resembles a tiny floating creature, drawing inspiration from characters such as Tinker Bell, Pokémon's Mew, and Studio Ghibli's Soot Sprites.
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